Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Era of Visual Studio Code

blog.robenkleene.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 698 posts

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#571

Post by nnt38 »

bostonvaulter2 wrote: post #222
laqq3 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read about this fact elsewhere also. Could you expand on this a bit? My impression was that VSCode and its associated extensions are open source, so I'm curious how Microsoft could make certain parts exclusive to its own build of VSCode.

> I'm curious how Microsoft could make certain parts exclusive to its own build of VSCode. By packaging it as an extension that isn't licensed like the rest of VSCode. Also on a related note, if you're using an open source build of VSCode (such as VSCodium) then you cannot use marketplace.visualstudio.com/ https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium#extensions-and-the-mark...

You absolutely CAN use marketplace.visualstudio.com, you just have to break ToS.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#572

Post by nnt38 »

sebmellen wrote: post #122
ezluckyfree wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that this feature doesn't work in open source builds of VSCode, it's an MS only thing.

I was very disappointed to find that VSCodium wasn't able to do this. It makes me consider switching back to VSCode.

VSCodium is able to do this, it is just more work.

https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#pro...

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#573

Post by slightwinder »

willbw wrote: post #198

I find this post along with the comments in "A Picture of Java in 2020" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24551390 to be incongruous with my experience as a professional developer. My first couple of years writing software I used Vim, then VSCode, then worked in a Java shop and was forced to use IntelliJ. I didn't like it at first, but now after a couple of years I cannot see how I lived without it. The idea that…

> The idea that VSCode is the future doesn't seem right to me.

VS Code is the future of editors, not IDEs or all developing. There will always this two sides which live from the box and those who build their own box. And for the later VS Code is nowadays one of the best road to walk.

> JetBrains products allow you to do so much out of the box,

It's also very limited on where you can work with it. It works for the handful most popular languages they support, but what if you get a bit more exotic? What if need something non-programming, like markdown, rst or plantuml? What if I am not satisfied with a certain feature in the IDEs editor or workflow?

If your Box is not supporting it, you need to customize it, and there JetBrains is just not as good as editors like VS Code, vim, emacs.. And VS Code even goes to great lengths to gain the IDE-state of having everything out of the box.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#574

Post by aramix »

nightowl_games wrote: post #334
varispeed wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience out of the box you get poor performance and you have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to change configuration to improve it as knowledge is scattered in many places and not always up to date. Then it still likes to stall from time to time or sometimes doesn't register key presses properly. It's a poor user experience, but even worse is that alternatives are often worse. I wish there was an e…

JetBrains products _are_ pretty much the best. I think Android Studio + Kotlin is the best, most impressive IDE experience I've ever had. Mostly because Android Development in general is kinda hard, and Android Studio cleans it all up so nicely for you. It really outshines XCode in this regard. I've never used CLion but I really want to. That being said, I think it's clear that VSCode is, and will remain, dominant. F…

They did something already https://github.com/features/codespaces

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#575

Post by dreen »

derefr wrote: post #279
winrid wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java doesn't have a lot of friction. In fact, IntelliJ is probably the closest you'll get today to the "golden age" of programming with something like Turbo Pascal. Also, good luck doing major refactoring with a text editor. In 2020 we can do better than find and replace.

You're conflating the language and the prosthetic used to code in it. Java is a high-friction language. Write it in a text editor, and measure how long it takes to write some working nontrivial Java. What you're measuring there is the inherent friction of Java, as a language. The IDE adds negative friction — lubrication — to the process. But that's a separate thing from the language itself. As I said, just try to thi…

Offtopic, what do you use for editing Erlang? I'm quite interested in trying out Eralng or Elixir in near future.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#576

Post by gimboland »

thu2111 wrote: post #532
gimboland wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may change your mind if you plug your MBP into an external 4K display and try to use a scaled resolution: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-526 — don't get me wrong, I love PyCharm too for all the reasons spoken about in this thread, but this issue (which has been open for five years now) has made me attempt to jump ship to VSCode for my python work several times. I _do_ always come back to PyCharm... so f…

What's the reason for using a scaled resolution btw? Can't you just ramp up the font size in the IDE? It looks like maybe a macOS issue as Windows/Linux don't have the same problem, but there's a port of Java to Apple's proprietary Metal API in progress for some time. It's possible that will fix it.

Yes, as it happens you can in PyCharm; in many other apps I use that's not the case, however. I've got used to running at full 4K but TBH sometimes I worry about eye strain.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#577

Post by DougBTX »

oblio wrote: post #559
greyman wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I used VSCode for Python programming, until I found Pycharm is better. I also used it for Go programming, but later found Goland to be better. But what confuses me is that the article always references it as a "Text Editor", not an IDE. As a text editor it might be the best, but as far as I am concerned, I just don't need "standalone" text editor. I don't have usage for it. I use IDE for programming, and as…

If you spend your entire day in a huge project with a ton of code and work together with a large team of software developers, you'll probably use an IDE. Your workflow probably involves launching the IDE once per day or even leaving it open all the time. If you do mostly consulting work, small projects, switching between languages with poor IDE support (usually dynamic languages), you'll probably use a smart editor.…

It seems like the only distinction between an "IDE" and a "Text Editor" nowadays is that an "IDE" is slow to start up but a "Text Editor" is fast to start up.

Everything else that would be in an IDE historically (project browsers, intellisense, code completion, refactoring, integrated build and debugger UI, test runners, etc, etc) all show up in "Text Editors". The only question is how good that functionality is, which varies between editor-language pairs.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#578

Post by slightwinder »

bitwize wrote: post #178
jimbokun wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like Emacs shares the same product philosophy of VS Code. Outside of the core functionality everything is an ELisp/Javascript plugin. That explains Emacs amazing longevity, but as the article points out, Emacs longevity is actually a problem as its keyboard and UI conventions predate the modern conventions that came with Windows and MacOS.

The difference between VSCode and Emacs is the difference between an extensible text editor, and an editor that was designed to be extended, molded, and shaped as you work. At any time within Emacs, you can evaluate Lisp code to extend or modify its functionality. What's more, the always-on presence of Lisp turns Emacs into a computing environment with strong editing primitives, rather than a text editor with stuff b…

> At any time within Emacs, you can evaluate Lisp code to extend or modify its functionality.

This is also true for VS Code (with JavaScript instead of Emacs Lisp of course). VS Code is just a bit more organized on the surface, giving it significant advantages over emacs in that regard, but also a bit more closed in culture.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#579

Post by inglor »

aramix wrote: post #574
nightowl_games wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JetBrains products _are_ pretty much the best. I think Android Studio + Kotlin is the best, most impressive IDE experience I've ever had. Mostly because Android Development in general is kinda hard, and Android Studio cleans it all up so nicely for you. It really outshines XCode in this regard. I've never used CLion but I really want to. That being said, I think it's clear that VSCode is, and will remain, dominant. F…

They did something already https://github.com/features/codespaces

I just wanted to weigh in that I am in the codespaces beta and it's working quite nicely!

The experience is exactly what you'd expect, all the VSCode extensions mostly work and development is pretty smooth.

The only bad part is that I (ironically) wish it felt more like an "App" and not a browser tab.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#580

Post by EE84M3i »

DougBTX wrote: post #577
oblio wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you spend your entire day in a huge project with a ton of code and work together with a large team of software developers, you'll probably use an IDE. Your workflow probably involves launching the IDE once per day or even leaving it open all the time. If you do mostly consulting work, small projects, switching between languages with poor IDE support (usually dynamic languages), you'll probably use a smart editor.…

It seems like the only distinction between an "IDE" and a "Text Editor" nowadays is that an "IDE" is slow to start up but a "Text Editor" is fast to start up. Everything else that would be in an IDE historically (project browsers, intellisense, code completion, refactoring, integrated build and debugger UI, test runners, etc, etc) all show up in "Text Editors". The only question is how good that functionality is, whi…

In my mind the biggest difference is that in an IDE I need a stateful "project" or "solution" and with a text editor I don't.
Post reply on HN